The death toll from a tornado in Mississippi last Friday has risen to twenty-six people as of this morning. The pictures are horrifically tragic; among the victims were a one-year-old and her father. More severe weather struck the region last night, including a likely tornado in Georgia that injured multiple people and caused significant damage.

In better news from nature, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Uranus will align and display themselves tonight in a row on the western horizon. The best time for viewing will be twenty to twenty-five minutes after the sun has set.

Meanwhile, researchers report that shifting tectonic plates are splitting Africa into two continents. The shift has been ongoing since the East African Rift—a thirty-five-mile-long crack in Ethiopia’s desert—emerged in 2005. However, we’re told the continent will not completely split for another five to ten million years.

A “scaled secession” is happening in the United States

If you’re looking for another continent dividing in real time, you could focus on the United States. Professor Michael J. Lee writes in The Conversation that a “scaled secession” is already taking place within the United States. This is not the “national divorce” that has been recently in the news but “soft separatism” in which communities are distancing from one another in a variety of ways.

Wealthier areas are separating into parallel school districts. Eleven states calling themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries” refuse to enforce federal gun restrictions. Eleven counties in Eastern Oregon support seceding and reclassifying themselves as “Greater Idaho”; Idaho’s state government supports the move. Over two dozen rural Illinois counties, seeking to be free of Chicago’s political influence, have passed pro-secession referendums.

Momentum toward secession is growing on the “left” as well: “Cal-exit” is a plan for California to leave the union. “Sanctuary” cities and states refuse to enforce what they consider to be unfair immigration laws and policies. Some prosecutors and judges refuse to prosecute women and medical providers for newly illegal abortions in their states.

California punishes Walgreens over abortion

Are we dividing over biblical morality as well?

In a recent New York Times column, David French chronicles a host of recent events that impinge on our basic constitutional freedoms. For example, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that his state would not renew a multimillion-dollar contract with Walgreens because the company responded to Republican legal warnings and chose not to dispense an abortion pill in twenty-one “red” states.

In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a California rule requiring pro-life pregnancy centers to publish information about free or low-cost abortions. An appeals court recently ruled that legislation in New York prohibiting employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of their “reproductive health decision making” may violate the rights of pro-life organizations that require employees not to have abortions and to refrain from extramarital sex.

Public schools sometimes withhold information from parents about a child’s gender transition. California has enacted a statute granting the state broad authority to permit children to receive “gender-affirming health care” in the state, even potentially over the objection of a custodial parent. And the list goes on, in “red” states and “blue” states alike.

Legislation in Israel would jail Christians for evangelism

The Easter season is a great time to discuss the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection and to invite friends to Easter services. So, here’s a thought experiment: What cost would you pay to make your faith public?

In Israel, a bill was introduced in January that would punish Christians who “solicit conversion of religion” with jail time. If they seek to lead an adult to Christ, they would serve a year in jail; if they share their faith with a minor, they would serve two years. Prime Minister Netanyahu announced last week, “We will not advance any law against the Christian community,” indicating that the bill has no chance of becoming law.

But what if it did? What if similar legislation were to pass in the US? What price would you pay to fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission (Matthew 28:18–20) as his witness where you live and around the world (Acts 1:8)?

As the Mississippi tornado demonstrated, we are all one moment from eternity. We have only today to turn to the One who made the planets (Colossians 1:16) and in whom “all things hold together” (v. 17) in our broken world (Romans 8:22). And we have only today to help those we influence turn to him as well.

“Gratitude offered by the saved to the Savior”

The next time it could cost you to share your faith, remember how desperately people need your Lord. The night before he died, Jesus prayed: “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Evangelism does not “impose” your personal beliefs—it shares the only path anywhere in the universe that leads to eternal life.

The more people reject our Savior, the more they need our Savior.

And the next time it could cost you to serve your Lord, remember the price he paid to serve you. Max Lucado wrote: “Worship is a voluntary act of gratitude offered by the saved to the Savior, by the healed to the Healer, and by the delivered to the Deliverer. If you and I can go days without feeling an urge to say ‘thank you’ to the One who saved, healed, and delivered us, then we’d do well to remember what he did.”

If we can “go days without feeling an urge” to serve him by sharing his grace, we’d do well to do the same.

Denison Forum

While news of Donald Trump’s impending arrest dominated headlines earlier this week, the former president remains a free man as of this writing. That reality might come as a surprise, however, for the millions of people who’ve already seen pictures of him thrown to the ground and dragged off by police.

It turns out, those “deepfake” pictures that went viral across social media were the work of an AI art generator following the suggestions of Eliot Higgins, the founder of an open-source investigative outlet called Bellingcat.

As Higgins described, “I was just mucking about. I thought maybe five people would retweet it.” More than 5.5 million views later—not counting all those who have shared the images across other platforms—it’s safe to say that the images have surpassed his initial expectations. And while the original post included the caption “Making pictures of Trump getting arrested while waiting for Trump’s arrest” to clarify that the images were fake, that disclaimer was quickly lost as the pictures spread.

Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) noted that “while it took a few years for the capabilities to catch up, we’re now at a point where these tools are widely available and incredibly capable.” And the more famous the person at the focus of the art, the more realistic the images become since the AI gets better at portraying someone the more often it attempts to do so.

Sam Gregory, the executive director of the human rights organization Witness, warns that a time could be fast approaching when realistic but false images made for fun are the least of our concerns: “There’s been a giant step forward in the ability to create fake but believable images in volume. And it’s easy to see how this could be done in a coordinated way with an intent to deceive. . . . The aim may not be to convince people that a certain event happened but to convince people that they can’t trust anything and to undermine trust in all images.”

However, if that outcome were to become a reality, it would not necessarily be the fault of the AI but rather of the people who use it. And we don’t have to look far to see how those decisions are already yielding potentially devastating consequences.

Ten minutes to guns loaded

In a recent study by the group EKO, researchers set up nine new TikTok accounts (PDF), each with a birthday portraying the account holder as a thirteen-year-old, the youngest a user can be to set up an account with the service. Their goal was to see how easy it would be for a child to find explicit videos related to suicide, incel and “manosphere,” and drugs.

After establishing accounts to focus on each of those subjects, they liked and bookmarked—but did not share or comment on—ten videos related to one of those topics. That sample proved sufficient for TikTok’s algorithm to flood their For You Page with videos that promoted increasingly explicit content related to their search.

The results on suicide were particularly troubling.

As the researchers relate, it only took ten minutes of basic viewing for TikTok to begin recommending videos “with guns being loaded and text suggesting suicide, alongside hundreds of comments in agreement and some listing exact dates to self-harm or attempt suicide. Beyond videos explicitly pushing suicide, TikTok’s For You Page was filled with videos promoting content that pushes despondent and hopeless commentary.”

The study’s authors caution that “looking at these videos in isolation might not raise concern. . . . [but] the algorithm seemed to be chasing our researcher with content to keep them on the platform. In this case, the content fed by TikTok’s algorithm was overwhelmingly depressing, nihilistic and otherwise hopeless.” They go on to describe how “even employees at TikTok have been disturbed by the app’s push towards depressive content, that could include self-harm.”

And these issues are hardly limited to TikTok. Most social media platforms have AI-driven algorithms designed to promote increasingly engaging content in whatever areas a user shows interest.

The true problem with AI

It would be easy to look at the findings in the EKO survey or the chaos created by the fake images of Donald Trump’s arrest and conclude that the problem is the technology.

We must remember, however, that AI is not inherently evil. After all, if you go looking for funny animal videos, cooking tips, or sports highlights, it can fill your feed with content that brings happiness and laughter. But if you go with a darker purpose in mind, it can easily exacerbate those intentions as well. And those darker intentions have been around since humanity first left Eden.

Ultimately, the problem with AI is the degree to which it makes feeding our sinful impulses so much simpler. And it can do so in a way that is so subtle that we hardly even notice it’s happening. Again, though, the foundational problem is and always will be our sin.

We can get mad at TikTok or other forms of social media—and such anger or hesitance is by no means unwarranted—but even if they went away tomorrow we would still create new ways to satisfy those same desires.

At the end of the day, people just need Jesus. And as clichéd or preachy as that may sound, it’s the truth.

So be mindful of the power wielded by social media and the artificial intelligence baked into its algorithms, but don’t forget that you are ultimately responsible for its influence in your life. And be sure that when it comes to evaluating that influence, you remember to include God in the conversation.

He is the only One who can save us from the sin that resides at the heart of these problems, both eternally and in the present moment.

Will you seek his help today?

Denison Forum